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Lesson plans delivered to teachers in India via SMS, tablets introduced to classrooms in Malawi to improve numeracy and specialist units created to bring down newborn mortality rates by 40% in five hospitals in Ethiopia, are among VSO’s most successful recent initiatives according to its Annual Report 2014/15 published today.

VSO is calling upon all returned volunteers around the world to contribute to a new study into the long-term impact of volunteering on poverty. To take part in the Long-term Impact of Volunteering study, please register online at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/VSOsurvey-registration

In London last night leading figures from the worlds of business and international development gathered to launch VSO Knowledge Exchange. Seed funded by the UK government’s Department for International Development (DFID) and run by Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), VSO Knowledge Exchange offers skilled employees in the private sector a way to volunteer to help change the lives of people in some of the world’s poorest places.

It is now 100 days until world leaders meet at the United Nations in New York to agree on a new agenda for people and the planet – the Sustainable Development Goals.

The Sustainable Development Goals map out 17 goals for all nations to end poverty, reduce inequality and sustain the environment to 2030. The Goals mark a new era in international development and the current draft acknowledges the important role of volunteering in their implementation.

This week the UN released a ‘zero draft’ document outlining how the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will look. VSO welcomes the high level of ambition in the draft SDGs. It’s essential that this ambition does not waiver over the next few months, as the details are finalised.

VSO believes that the SDGs should be driven by people, not by governments or politics. The draft alludes to this, way down in paragraph 43, by stating that this is “an agenda by and for the people” but we call for these seven short but important words to be at the top of the agenda.